Josh Swihart Urges Zcash to End Both Automatic Funding Streams

Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) founder Josh Swihart called Tuesday, Oct. 27, for Zcash (ZEC) to end both block-reward funding streams, widening debate over Sean Bowe’s draft to redirect only its 8% grant allocation.

“It'd be a mistake to kill only one part of the dev fund,” Swihart wrote. He called for both streams to go to the Network Sustainability Mechanism through the halving, adding, “Markets like certainty.”

Bowe’s draft would send future payments from Zcash Community Grants’ (ZCG) 8% share to the Network Sustainability Mechanism for the rest of that stream’s term. ZCG would retain its accumulated treasury and grant-making authority. The separate 12% Coinholder-Controlled Fund would remain unchanged. The earlier proposal to redirect ZCG’s block-reward share covered Bowe’s draft before Swihart’s call for broader changes.

Under ZIP 1016, the two funding channels run through the third halving. One directs 8% of block rewards to ZCG; the other assigns 12% to a fund whose use is decided by coinholders. ZCG grants are selected by a five-person committee elected by the community.

Swihart’s approach would end the 12% allocation as well. He proposed that ZCG first honor approved grants and then transfer its remaining treasury to the Network Sustainability Mechanism. He also raised a one-time legal defense endowment for developers, subject to a coinholder vote. Swihart disclosed that ZODL recently received a retroactive coinholder grant for core protocol work.

At 6:37:53 p.m. ET on Oct. 21 (22:37:53 UTC), ZCG held 91,452.98 ZEC and $8,796,224 in U.S. dollar assets, against $2,417,165 in outstanding grant liabilities. At an assumed $1,300 per ZEC, net resources would be about $125.3 million. The snapshot is marked “Updates required,” and the inputs have not been independently reconciled.

Bowe wrote Tuesday that the program “was never designed to handle this amount of funding.” His proposal remains an open pull request, is not part of Network Upgrade 7 and has no assigned activation heights or reference implementation.